Building a Home Gym on a Budget

While there are budget gym memberships available, they often still cost over $100 a year, and require you having the motivation to leave the house to drive to the gym to workout. If you’re like me, this required extra lift can deter you from making the time and commitment to go. I’m a big fan of DIY and enjoy the convenience of having a home gym, especially since it saves us monthly membership fees. Building a home gym can get expensive fast if you aren’t careful (just look at what treadmills can run), but there are ways to build a home gym without a large space or big financial commitment. Below, we cover tips for building a cheap home gym on a budget.

Our home gym has grown slightly over the years as we’ve adjusted our fitness goals. It currently includes:

That’s it! We had a Gold’s Gym spin bike, but it wasn’t worth shipping across the country when we moved. We didn’t use it enough the past few years we owned it to justify repurchasing one out here.

I started with shopping second hand above because it can make the biggest impact on building a home gym on a budget. If you’re new to the secondhand market, welcome! We’re glad to have you, as long as you aren’t underbidding us for equipment we want. Here are a few places (ranked by our preference) to explore when looking for used gym equipment:

We haven’t personally used the following but they’re worth exploring if you’re looking for other options:

It doesn’t take much money or space to build a home gym on a budget if you focus on a few key pieces of inexpensive, versatile equipment instead of bulky, expensive specialty items. Build your home gym with your specific fitness goals in mind, and ramp it up slowly so you have time to not only cash flow the purchases but to make sure you actually enjoy working out and will use it.